The Time Machine

I read this novel (or novella) as part of The Complete Science
Fiction Treasury of H.G. Wells omnibus, which is the book reflected in
the sidebar information.

The Time Machine is one of those classics that nearly everyone has
been exposed to in some way. There are several movie adaptations,
numerous critical analyses, references in many other books, and even a few
sequels, official and otherwise. I've read or watched a lot of that
material, but somehow never read the original story. I thought it was
time to change that before reading Stephen Baxter's The Time Ships
so that I'd be familiar with the base material.

The basic outlines of the story are probably familiar to everyone. In a
regular gathering of gentleman, their host and one of their number, never
named, discloses that he has invented a time machine and demonstrates a
small model. They are invited back later to hear the results of his
experiments, but their host is not there to greet them when they arrive.
After some speculation and the beginning of dinner, the time traveler
arrives late, dishevelled and injured, and recounts to them an amazing
story of his adventures in the year 802,701.

Much of the story is therefore told from the first-person perspective of
the time traveler. That segment is a classic adventure story, but mixed
with observational detail and attention to the specifics of his
surroundings that marks the story as science fiction (although it predates
the development of that term). While there are several dramatic moments
and close escapes, the focus of the story is on exploration, discovery,
and the attempt by the time traveler to understand the history and nature
of the far-future world in which he finds himself. In that sense, it
surprised me with the similarity to a modern Big Dumb Object story, where
the characters are put into an alien environment and are trying to
determine how it works and why it exists from experimentation and clues.

The core of the discovery, of course, are the Eloi and the Morlocks, their
history and relationships, and the implications for the future of the
human race. I won't spoil the conclusions for those who have somehow
avoided learning the details, but The Time Machine strongly
reflects the sense of class consciousness, industrial relations, political
debates, and class conflicts in the time when Wells wrote. Relationships
between workers and management have changed since, largely removing the
nobility from the picture, and so Wells's vision of the future feels
slightly dated. However, it held up better than I expected. It was also
more horrific than I expected. Wells develops quite a bit of tension from
a shortage of matches and a sense of oppressive darkness, and despite the
exploration and theorizing about the nature of the future world, he
maintains a fast story-telling pace.

This is not an uplifting or optimistic story, and there is where it seems
most different from the typical science fiction exploration of similar
ideas. The picture of the future of both the world and the human race is
pessimistic and bleak. Wells uses an artful and effective way of handling
the normal problem of knowing that a first-person narrator must have
survived by constructing The Time Machine as nested stories and
using two narrators, permitting a dark ending at the character level as
well. And yet, the story avoids falling into the horror trap of "things
man was not meant to know." It left me not entirely sure how to react,
with more of an ambiguous edge than the triumphant gentleman's story of
harrowing adventure that it's modelled after.

If you've avoided the original because of concerns that it might be a slow
and wordy classic or feel badly dated, it's still worth a look. The
Time Machine does speak to a somewhat dated set of political concerns,
and there's a lot of description and a plot that no longer carries many
surprises, but it's worth reading. The description is concise, effective,
and at times almost poetic; I was particularly delighted by the
description of the ruins of the museum. If you've never read the
original, it's worth checking out from the library or finding in one of
the many inexpensive paperback edition.